Of course they are. They know there's no possible scenario in which military escalation turns out well for them.

At minimum, fighting a doom-to-fail expeditionary war against the US (...and the UK, France, and quite possibly the Saudis and who knows who else...) in Syria would be politically devastating for Putin. Not only would it completely destroy the 'Russia Stronk! Putin Stronk! Russia Stronk Because Putin!' narrative and image he's constructed, it would complete undo all of his gains in Syria both in terms of his own goals (Notably, Russia would lose the naval base at Tartus forever), and his efforts to court the Iranians (Assad would definitely be removed, and Iran's project to create a direct land route to Lebanon would be toast). Never mind that there's pretty much no way that a war between Russia and the west over Syria would stay in Syria. If the UK and France were belligerents, would they really allow Russian naval movements on their doorstep? How would they enforce that without attacking Russian warships? Would the Turks close the Bosphorus to Russian shipping entirely? Plus, even a low-intensity, relatively contained "Not-War" (Because I'm 90% sure that both sides would insist they weren't actually at war) would permanently secure economic and political sanctions on Russia, and bring who knows what else in terms of further measures. So even the best-case scenario would directly imperil the future of Putin's regime.

At worst, turning a shooting dispute over Syria into a shooting war in Europe would be an even worse no-win scenario for Putin. He knows that the Russia military doesn't stand a chance in a conventional confrontation with the West. So his only choices would be immediate nuclear escalation (I actually think this is pretty unlikely. The Kremlin is paranoid that the west secretly has some kind of effective strategic missile defense system, thus rendering Russia's aging and poorly maintained nuclear arsenal completely useless), or roll over and accept defeat, most likely fleeing to China, because he's the wealthiest man in the world and there's no way he could stomach or risk living as some kind of on-the-run fugitive in Russia just to play guerilla leader. Remember that he doesn't care about Russia except as a means of enriching himself and a base of power. He almost certainly wouldn't go down fighting just to preserve Russia's national honor or whatever.

Which is kind of the point of this whole charade. Syria, Ukraine, they're all just political ploys for Putin to use his control over the Russian state to expand his personal wealth and power. He won't do anything to meaningfully imperil that wealth and power. Putin isn't a conventional head of state, he's a mob boss that also happens to have control over a country.

I very much suspected that talk of shooting down the missiles and their launch platforms was so much bluster.

While it's not being discussed in the media... I doubt the total lack of Russian defensive action or response here has gone unnoticed in various capitals.

E: much tough talk about how the strikes "will be" or "could be" countered by "Russian strength" is about the "best" case for Putin. Even if Russian forces in Syria had managed to shoot down a few cruise missiles, what then? Does Russia continue to expend the limited supply of its most advanced air defense assets against more waves of US/UK/France missiles?

So, WoT only heats up the laptop and causes the fan to work overtime when I'm tabbed into the game. Tabbing out (to say, post here right now) causes the laptop to go back to normal. Not sure why that is. But to play for more than a battle or two at a time, I'm going to need to get some sort of cooling device. Sigh.

So, WoT only heats up the laptop and causes the fan to work overtime when I'm tabbed into the game. Tabbing out (to say, post here right now) causes the laptop to go back to normal. Not sure why that is. But to play for more than a battle or two at a time, I'm going to need to get some sort of cooling device. Sigh.

So, WoT only heats up the laptop and causes the fan to work overtime when I'm tabbed into the game. Tabbing out (to say, post here right now) causes the laptop to go back to normal. Not sure why that is. But to play for more than a battle or two at a time, I'm going to need to get some sort of cooling device. Sigh.

Basically, when WoT isn't up on your screen the GPU doesn't need to actually render anything. Since it isn't working hard anymore your laptop cools down because the heavy processing load has been put in a very low priority state. If I launch a graphics intensive game on my less than a year old Razer Blade it sounds like a jet engine just fired up within 20 seconds or so and the keyboard starts to get warm. This is completely normal. Laptops tend to run quiet and cool except when they are under heavy loads. It is a "make the battery last as long as possible" kind of thing. When they are under load the small high RPM fans inside go berserk and the laptop can get uncomfortably warm to the touch. This is a limitation of the small enclosures laptop hardware is encased within. Very little airflow and air volume on the inside makes it hard for the heat sinks to keep up with the heat the hardware is generating at full load so the entire thing gets warm because the casing itself is considered part of the heat dissipation system for the laptop.

On thing you can do to help would be to get a laptop cooling pad (they usually run from $20-$40). These basically keep air circulating around the laptop so that case of the laptop radiates heat as efficiently as possible and that the fans have cool air to pull in.

Amazon has all kinds of cooling pads that range from $20 to $60 bucks with LED lighting, multiple fans, etc etc. The ones I linked are made by Thermaltake so I'd conclude they would hold up and work fairly well.

Basically, when WoT isn't up on your screen the GPU doesn't need to actually render anything. Since it isn't working hard anymore your laptop cools down because the heavy processing load has been put in a very low priority state. If I launch a graphics intensive game on my less than a year old Razer Blade it sounds like a jet engine just fired up within 20 seconds or so and the keyboard starts to get warm. This is completely normal. Laptops tend to run quiet and cool except when they are under heavy loads. It is a "make the battery last as long as possible" kind of thing. When they are under load the small high RPM fans inside go berserk and the laptop can get uncomfortably warm to the touch. This is a limitation of the small enclosures laptop hardware is encased within. Very little airflow and air volume on the inside makes it hard for the heat sinks to keep up with the heat the hardware is generating at full load so the entire thing gets warm because the casing itself is considered part of the heat dissipation system for the laptop.

On thing you can do to help would be to get a laptop cooling pad (they usually run from $20-$40). These basically keep air circulating around the laptop so that case of the laptop radiates heat as efficiently as possible and that the fans have cool air to pull in.

Amazon has all kinds of cooling pads that range from $20 to $60 bucks with LED lighting, multiple fans, etc etc. The ones I linked are made by Thermaltake so I'd conclude they would hold up and work fairly well.

Thank you for the explanation and links. I'm glad it's probably not a dust thing, as I really don't want to have to take the laptop apart if I can help it.

Is there a mod currently that would reduce some of the workload on the laptop by disabling things that can't be changed right now? Like for instance, the annoying lighting you get in the garage that would look pretty if I could run it on high settings?

My old laptop has been travelling with a cooling pad for like 7-8 years now, works pretty well at keeping everything functional. Although I'm not sure I'd try running WoT on it anymore since it's been some 2+ years since that laptop has been turned on. I did play the majority of my WoT matches on it back in the day, probably 18,000 to 20,000 of them.

I think the teams are even worse than when I stopped playing. Holy f*cking sh*t, how do you get to be that dumb and ignorant?

Yup, decided to play a few matches, well just one, to get the Camo and by THE EMPEROR! Played in the Thunderbolt, lost I think 5 in a row. Doesn't help that all the Tier 6 Shermans can't carry games at all where they really require being exposed for far too long to even realise their DPM potential.

This is why I am and always will advocate for skill team balancing. It is just beyond stupid to not include it in a team based game. Pubs or not.

Also team VOIP. If MWO online can do so with no issues of "squeakers" or ragers, then I am sure WoT can. If there are problem players, there is always the mute feature.

This game will never improve gameplay wise if it refuses to implement standard features in Western games while being plagued by dodgy balancing.

MWO is ok, but that's because instead of skill based MM, it has skill accelerated time-spent MM.

WoT ranked battles were pretty good after getting out of the scrub bracket as well.

Skill accelerated time spent?

And WOT ranked isnt skill based at all its rank based. Which is the best you can probably get in games like this. Because most skill based systems (using a developer derived rating) are generally awful.